One of the most important aspects of any Project Server implementation is the ability to accurately record and report on actual work values when they are submitted by resources. The desire to ensure that the integrity of actual work, or “actuals”, is maintained within Project Server is one of the most critical customer requests. When implementing a Project Server based solution for time tracking and progress reporting there are a lot of questions that come up like:

  • What’s the best way to have my resources report time for their assignments?
  • How do I make sure that the resource-reported value and the project plan stay in sync?
  • Where should I retrieve data from if I want to integrate Project Server with an external billing or ticket tracking system?

Admittedly the breadth of configuration options available in Project Server can create some confusion and lead to solution configurations that are not optimal for the maintenance of actual work values. To help ease the process of recording and reporting on actual work we’ve created theBest practices for submitting and reporting on actual work (Project Server 2010) documentation. To give you a quick preview of what the document contains here are the primary tenets of best practices for actual work integrity:

  1. Use single entry mode
  2. Protect user updates with protected actuals
  3. Use submitted work from timesheets, instead of project plans, for timephased reporting
  4. Use administrative time categories to track non-project work

You can find more details for each of these best practices in the linked document.